Share This Article
It’s a Zoom World, but the SPS School Committee Isn’t Sure It Wants To Be Livin’ in It.
On Monday, August 5, the school committee debated the merits of making their in-person meetings hybrid. The outcome of the conversation is a bit unclear, but Superintendent Brad Crozier was tasked with evaluating options for in-person meetings where Sudbury TV could live-stream and/or broadcast the meetings, at least until the SPS meeting room at the Fairbank Community Center has the necessary A/V equipment for a livestream.
The current school committee schedule alternates between fully remote meetings and in-person meetings with no livestream and no option for the public to join via Zoom. The in-person meetings are recorded by Sudbury TV, then uploaded to their website at a later date. At the last in-person meeting of the school committee, the recording started after the portion of the meeting dedicated to a workshop with the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. (MASC)
What’s Hybrid?
A hybrid meeting would allow both members of the committee and members of the public to participate in meetings remotely, even when some members of the committee are assembled in-person.
Typically that means a committee uses Zoom for video conferencing, with two-way audio and video capabilities available in the room. That allows the public to offer public comment while remote, and allows members of the committee to participate in meetings when they are unable to be present physically.
A livestream or broadcast of an in-person-only meeting merely allows the public to observe the meetings live, but does not allow remote participation for the public during public comment, nor does it allow a committee member to participate in the meeting remotely.
What’s Typical?
The resistance to hybrid meetings is somewhat unique in Sudbury. The vast majority of Town boards and committees meet remotely or hybrid. The Select Board allocated $78,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds for hybrid meeting equipment years ago, which outfitted multiple town spaces with the capabilities needed.
The Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee has regularly used the Flynn Building for hybrid meetings, and the Select Board has used both Town Hall and the Police Station for hybrid meetings. Mere steps below the Sudbury Public Schools central office is a senior center room that the Council on Aging uses for hybrid meetings. The Planning Board, Finance Committee, Park and Recreation Commission, and Zoning Board of Appeals have been fully remote for almost all of their meetings in recent years.
In recent months, the Board of Health, Cultural Council and Board of Assessors have scheduled and/or held in-person only meetings that are not recorded by SudburyTV. The Goodnow Library Trustees also do in-person only meetings, and those are recorded by Sudbury TV for future on-demand viewing, just like the SPS School Committee has been doing recently.
That’s all to say: it’s far more likely that any Town committee meeting is fully remote than it is hybrid or in-person only. For elected boards, the vast majority of meetings have been remote or hybrid for years.
Who Wants What?
Vice Chair Meredith Gerson argued against doing hybrid meetings. New members Karyn Jones and Mary Stephens argued for doing hybrid meetings. Member Mandy Sim called for a middle position in which in-person meetings were broadcast for the public to observe the meetings live (1:33:00) and to perhaps try a hybrid meeting. Chair Nicole Burnard voiced support for live-streaming their in-person meetings, but opposition to hybrid meetings.
Superintendent Crozier expressed that SPS would be responsible for the security of the community center building if they were to use the senior center conference room after hours. (1:34:00) He also noted that he would need to get keys. Though those things seem entirely surmountable, he appeared to be more inclined to use another location, such as the Police Station, than to use the room beneath the SPS offices.
Crozier also suggested that they may need to incur additional expenses for a staff member to facilitate a hybrid meeting and manage the technology. That issue hasn’t come up in discussions about hybrid meeting formats among other boards. Crozier also lamented that they don’t know when the SPS conference room will have the final pieces of A/V installed to support livestreams on Sudbury TV.
Vice Chair Gerson argued for the benefits of in-person meetings to encourage relationship building and collaboration between members. Gerson raised concerns about executive sessions being conducted remotely and appeared to reference the unrecorded MASC workshop from their last meeting, stating that MASC told the committee that their meetings are open to the public, but not for the public.
“They’re using a device to watch our meetings, not attend, because the public are not participants in our meeting. The meetings are, as MASC very clearly laid out, they are our business meetings held in public, they are not meetings for the public.”
Vice Chair Gerson
She later added:
“The public participation, I think we have to get away from saying that. As MASC clearly laid out, the public can make comments at public comment, but these are not meetings for the public.”
Vice Chair Gerson
The opinion provided by MASC (we can’t verify the reference because the MASC workshop was not recorded) is a seemingly accurate interpretation of the Open Meeting Law. However, the statewide trend has been towards great access for, and participation from, the public.
The latest developments on this front include a bill working its way through the legislature that could mandate remote access to meetings, with certain exceptions. Bill H.4771, An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings, actually prioritizes remote access for public participation by way of the definitions:
““Remote access,” access through the internet, video conferencing or other video technology that allows the public to view and, when permitted or required, participate in a meeting of a public body remotely from a location other than the meeting location.”
The rest of the conversation was largely a back-and-forth between Member Karyn Jones and Vice Chair Gerson. Jones argued that childcare and work travel could create barriers for members of the committee to attend meetings, and not offering the option for members to join remotely could exclude some voices and weaken the work of the committee.
“Maybe we have someone who would love to join school committee, wants to run, but they’re a single parent. There’s lots of barriers. And I just want to make sure all of us can be here, that there’s that flexibility where if everyone’s voice can be present and hear and contribute to what’s on the agenda, that there’s a way to do that if one of us can’t [attend].” (1:23:25)
Member Jones
Gerson then appeared to argue in favor of having members missing some meetings rather than having a remote option:
“We’re volunteers, right? But this is a job. So you know what the requirements are before you apply for the job and go for a job. And I wouldn’t apply for a job if I couldn’t accommodate that work schedule. And those are choices that everybody has to make in life. But like a job, I also don’t hold it against people if they have to miss an occasional meeting. We take time off from our paid jobs, it’s okay to miss an occasional meeting and take time off from our unpaid jobs.” (1:25:16)
Vice Chair Gerson
Jones went on to argue that a single parent may be excluded from even considering running for school committee in the future if they don’t use hybrid meeting technology: “We’re excluding people even before they run.”
Things took a strange turn from there. Gerson argued that single-parents couldn’t be at home caring for their children while on a Zoom meeting.
“Practically if someone is a single parent and they don’t have childcare they wouldn’t be able to participate in a meeting on Zoom because they would be taking care of their kids.” (1:27:00)
Vice Chair Gerson
Jones shared her personal experience as the primary childcare provider in her household and how the technology has made it possible to be present at the school committee meeting which was remote that night, and also made it possible for her to serve on another Town committee. She argued that hybrid was more inclusive for elected members of the committee now and in the future.
“It’s exclusionary to say you have to be in-person. It excludes people who could be extremely smart, extremely good at this, just by saying we are not going to do this thing when we have the technology in town to do it.” (1:28:08)
Member Jones
While they seemed to achieve consensus on adding live-streaming to their in-person meetings, the committee remained split on true hybrid meetings, with an apparent majority preferring not to do them.
What’s The Point?
The trend since the Covid-19 pandemic has been to embrace hybrid meeting technology. But the conversation rests at the center of multiple societal and political trends.
Public participation reportedly rose when the Covid-19 pandemic shifted meetings to remote formats. When that happened, the phenomenon illustrated some unexpected benefits, such as more equitable access to public meetings for people of all abilities. The work-from-home movement may also be giving rise to a volunteer-from-home movement of sorts, which is often called “virtual volunteering.”
Meanwhile, incivility and the abuse of digital technologies like Zoom and social media platforms is on the rise, making open meetings all the more challenging for some volunteers to manage. A major ruling from the State’s highest court in 2023 affirmed the “right to be rude” in public meetings. That brought clarity for chairs of public bodies on how to manage outbursts, but little in the way of comfort.
Some believe hybrid meetings make it easier for candidates to step up and serve at a time when public participation in local government is low. Just this year, in nearby Wayland, all 12 races on their town election ballot were uncontested. In Sudbury, only two races were contested in 2024.
Public service and public participation in local government are not the only issues at-hand. Sudbury Public Schools is the single largest cost center in Sudbury, and one where taxpayers may have higher expectations for openness and transparency. With several hybrid-equipped rooms to choose from throughout town (one of which has been used regularly by a peer school committee) doing less than what’s already done by other boards may not sit well with some residents.
Whatever the public thinks, the school committee itself remains divided on hybrid meetings.